Nature of a flood-basalt-magma reservoir based on the compositional variation in a single flood-basalt flow and its feeder dike in the Mesozoic Hartford Basin, Connecticut

The erosional remains of the Mesozoic Holyoke basalt in the Hartford, Pomperaug, and Deerfield basins of Connecticut and Massachusetts indicate an original flow volume of >1200 km³. Its feeder dike, which is about 50 m wide and 160 km long, can be traced down through 2 km of Mesozoic sediments and, as a result of faulting associated with basin formation, through an additional 6 km of Paleozoic metamorphic rocks. Chemical profiles through the distal and proximal parts of the flow and through the dike at depths of 2, 4, and 8 km provide sequential samples of the magma that rose during this one eruptive event. The flow and dike have restricted compositions that indicate saturation with olivine, augite, and plagioclase at depth. The flow consisted largely of a liquid at the pigeonite reaction point. Dike compositions can be modeled as mixtures of this liquid with up to 24% crystals of plagioclase, augite, and olivine. The dike compositions indicate equilibration with these minerals at 3.8 kbar. This pressure corresponds to a depth of 12.2 km, which is believed to have been the depth of the brittle/ductile transition in the crust at the time. This transition appears to be the only reasonable barrier that could have caused ponding of the magma at the mid-crustal level. The Holyoke liquid is interpreted to have segregated from a compacting crystal mush following 30% crystallization of the magma in this mid-crustal reservoir. Eruption of the basalt exhausted the supply of segregated liquid, and when the remaining crystal mush began to rise in the dike, the average density of the magma column increased until it matched the average density of the intruded crust, and the eruption ended. By analogy with the differentiation that took place in the solidifying Holyoke flow on the surface, the mid-crustal magma reservoir is estimated to have had a volume of at least 12,000 km³. The magma in this chamber must have come from a still deeper chamber, because it was too fractionated to have come directly from a mantle source. Received: 3 October 1997 / Accepted: 5 May 1998